Project description:Climate change forecasts increase the susceptibility of forest due to longer drier seasons. The adaptive management protocols have highlighted the reduction of the forest densification to improve their vulnerability to extreme climate events (i.g. drought). One of this sensitive woody species to climate change is the Abies pinsapo, a relic conifer tree endemic from the southern Spain. Previous works have shown changes in their trends because of the climate change action, being carried out experimental thinning management in their lowest distribution limit, in Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park (Malaga). Our objective is to evaluate the water improvements of thinned trees in terms of light availability by means of a shading treatment in those thinned trees. To do that we have evaluated the synergic effect of ecophysiology, metabolomics and transcriptomics in control, thinning and thinning+shading plots in wet and dry seasons for two years. The results showed strong differences between summer and spring seasons at the three studied levels. The water deficit shows a greater influence than light exposure in the ecophysiology and metabolomics tree response. And the transcriptomics suggested an improvement of thinned trees when light exposure was reduced. Our results support the necessity of adaptive forest management in order to improve the conservation status of A. pinsapo forest. The combination of different levels of tree response is paramount to understand and predict the tree physiology under water and light stress conditions.
Project description:Although drinking water disinfection has proved to be an effective strategy to eliminate most waterborne pathogens, bacterial pathogens can still show disinfection tolerance in drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs), posing a great threat to drinking water safety and human health. Despite stress signals such as starvation and low temperature were reported to increase disinfection tolerance of E. coli, it is unclear whether the stress-induced disinfection tolerance was conserved in different bacterial species.
